


Made, Believed.

by itdefiesimagination



Category: In The Flesh
Genre: M/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 08:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3202034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itdefiesimagination/pseuds/itdefiesimagination
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Kieren shifted onto his back and was glad he couldn’t see the other boy’s face, because there must’ve been hope there."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Made, Believed.

He remembers the first time Rick touched him with a certain clarity that was missing from the rest of his memories. Those – the dulled ones; everything that happened before; his first life – hung blurred, and dark, and heavy, so heavy that sometimes he woke (from a sort of half-sleep, half lucid state that he didn’t understand, and couldn’t take anything for) with a sharp crick in his neck (which he didn’t understand, and couldn’t take anything for.) So heavy that sometimes he wondered if lying to his mother, insisting that the sleeves of his sweatshirt had been unraveled by the wash (honestly) and not by his own restless fingers, was worth the trouble, or if he should just buy a new one. If he should let the imagined weight beat him down and replace his clothes and replace his brain, and swap out all of his body parts for lead so that he couldn’t feel them. That might fix his neck. These days, though, he convinced himself that it didn’t really need fixing, because he couldn’t really feel it (sometimes he swore he could, just barely . . . but no.) Some of the others at the treatment center preached, hands to their static hearts, that tactility was best in the fingertips and toes, and that – if they concentrated hard enough, and if the tap-water burned hot enough – they could feel it. Their heads had always seemed lighter than his. 

And though he’d never been one of the believers, he’d tried once, swiveling the knob on his standing faucet as far to the left as it could go, running it for ten minutes. Three would’ve been sufficient, but he waited until steam fogged his mirror and widows, until he figured the porcelain would give out if he didn’t _just do it_ , until he convinced himself that he’d be okay if he couldn’t . . . 

He dipped his hands beneath the faucet. Water that should’ve left the skin raw sprayed up in his face and stripped him of all the false hopes he’d collected while he was at Group. Nothing. He didn’t try again, but left the water on, because the sound it made against the bowl of the sink was a welcome lapse in silence. No one said much of anything in here. Nothing bumped in the night, nothing creaked. Once, Alex had kicked out in his sleep hard enough to send his mattress springs screaming, and how interesting, Kieren thought as he watched his roommate struggle back to sleep. How interesting that Alex had never shared his cause of death, not in Orientation. Not even in the private confines of their room. 

How interesting: Alex. Sometimes, in a vain effort to stave off boredom, Kieren made up stories about him. 

For example, in Kieren’s head, Alex always sat in the front-left corner of the classroom, with nothing to rebel against, but trying his hardest anyway, demanding to know how the quadratic formula applied to his daily routine, and whether or not it would protect him in a life-or-death situation, and would it be on the final, and if not could he please leave? Alex had two girlfriends and a boyfriend – all of whom knew about the others, but didn’t care, and none of it really mattered anyway, because Alex didn’t particularly like his girlfriend, or his girlfriend, or his boyfriend as much as they liked him. Alex grew his hair out in Sixth form and kept it long to annoy his mother and as a final Fuck You to a father who’d died of internal brain hemorrhaging when his oldest son twelve. Alex liked meeting people’s eyes on the street, and he never smoked. Alex had three younger brothers, all blonde except for him; his hair was near-identical to his dad’s. Unfortunately, so was his brain, and the hemorrhages gave him migraines for two months before they killed him. Death, and irrational, rabid half-life, had been a welcome sort of numbness . . . 

Or, he might’ve been hit by a car. Who knew? Alex didn’t talk to him much, but he did turn off the faucet when he came in that night. Kieren heard the knob squeal, heard the heavy, wet squelch of condensation rag-wiped off a mirror, but he kept up the pretense of sleep until Alex was leaning over him in the dark, voice low:

“Did it work?”

Kieren shifted onto his back and was glad he couldn’t see the other boy’s face, because there must’ve been hope there. 

“No.” 

Neither pretended to sleep that night, and, as he rubbed the pads of his fingers together (it should’ve hurt – it should have), Kieren caught himself wondering if he and Alex had died the same way. Maybe. Because Alex didn’t talk to him. And because, come to think of it, he didn’t talk to Alex either. 

Then again, no one did around here; talk, that is. At least, not outside of Group. 

So he never really got the chance to tell anyone about this memory, the sharpest one he had, and part of him was glad. The same part that understood – even at fourteen – why Bill Macy didn’t want him around, and why one day he’d taken Kieren by the arm with enough force to almost hurt, to warn, to get him out the door for the last time. (Well, the last time he’d know about. Once, when they were fifteen and seventeen and Rick was sure his father would be out, he and Kieren gathered the courage to sit on the steps outside of the Macy’s front door. It had been raining, and Janet had taken pity on them, but for the rest of the afternoon her eyes flicked dangerously toward the door -- her jaw too tight for either of the boys to relax. So, for a few hours, they sat cross-legged on the living room floor, playing some video game that Kieren kept loosing, half because he was honestly quite bad at it, half because he liked the way Rick laughed whenever he made a particularly stupid move. They kept to the cave after that.) 

_After that_ faded into one year, then another, then another. And at seventeen and nineteen, when their legs were almost too long to stretch out comfortably across the chamber, they still found themselves with stone at their backs and a measured sort of intimacy in their heads and hearts. 

Thinking back on it now (and before, and later, and forever, because he _would_ think about it forever), Kieren wasn’t sure what they’d said to one another. God knows, in those days he’d run their conversations over and over in his head the minute he got home and for hours later -- long after the Walkers had gone to bed and he’d retired to his own. Body curled, blanket tight to his chest, dark eyes locked on a dark ceiling, staring up, he'd hear it like a ghost record, scratched up in places, sometimes sweet. But now, all of the individual words blocked themselves into sentences, blocked themselves into conversations, blocked themselves into days, and years, and dissolved into these blurry pocket memories that colored the back of his mind. And he couldn’t remember. Couldn’t recall anything, outside of the faces Rick made when he knew no one else could see, the only time Rick had ever cried in front of him (Kieren does remember wishing that he’d wept harder; remembers hating himself for it.) Couldn’t recall anything in exact detail except:

“How do you do it?” 

Kieren choked on the coattails of a laugh, because that was Rick’s voice – Rick, who had now taken his hand, had now pressed a thumb to his palm, who was now inspecting Kieren’s too-long fingers with a scrutiny that made the boy’s throat close. It was Rick’s voice and for once there wasn’t a hint of misgiving.

“Do what?” asked Kieren. 

“All that stuff. All your paintings.” 

“I . . . don’t know?” Genuine confusion shook the words – as did fear, because he didn’t know what he’d done to pull these gentler tones from Rick’s voice; he didn’t know what to say to make sure they never receded back. “It – just happens. I mean, I have to think about it, usually. About how it’s supposed to look. Like . . .”

Rick was silent. 

Kieren was distraught. Because – to be perfectly, brutally honest – they mostly talked about Rick, and Rick’s dad, and Rick’s mum, and how Rick’s life was getting on, and the places Rick went when he wasn’t with Kieren, and the people Rick met who weren’t Kieren, and . . . and now it was his turn, and he wasn’t sure he had anything of value to say. (His brain spit all of this out rapid fire, because he didn’t resent Rick for his self-indulgent streak, not too much, and if Kieren was being fair, his own introversion enabled the behavior beyond the point where he had any right to complain.)

But now was his chance, and he scrambled for words. There was a dark, nervous knot winding in his chest, and he felt guiltier for it. Rick was his best, his only friend, and still he could find nothing to say to him. 

His best, his only friend was just about holding his hand. Words. Now, please. 

“You just – you – so, I mean, sometimes you try to think of something that’s bothering you, right?” Kieren glanced in Rick’s direction, simultaneously afraid to pull his hand away and convinced that he should. “Like, if it was you, you might think about your dad.” 

“I’ve never drawn anything. Can’t,” Rick said, brow crinkling. 

“No, I’m just saying if you did – ”

_Rick’s fingers through his._

“— you might think of him.”

_A thumb gentle along the lines of his palm, and a furrow of concentration._

“And then when you start painting, you choose colors, and lines, and things that help you understand whatever it is you’re feeling about the person. Christ, I’m really, I’m really bad at explaining, sorry. I mean, it’s doesn’t have to be something that bothers you, either. It can be a good thing.”

_Nails, bitten to the quick, now stared at like they were worth something more than the raw ache they caused. Worth more than trouble buttoning up his shirts in the morning._

“It can be a good person.” 

And that’s when, in this memory, Rick’s mouth finds his. The rest is strange, and off-center, and softer than expected, and Kieren's head feels the same way it did when he was seven years old and he nearly cracked his skull open on a patch of icy concrete. Every part of his brain seemed to vibrate out of place then, and so it does now, until his vision swims, and he has to close his eyes so he can't see the cave wall as it somersaults before him. (It shouldn't have been doing that. Rick's tongue is against his bottom lip, and it shouldn't have been doing that.) 

Kieren remembers fingertips against his stomach, and it’s so clear, all of it. It’s clear and it’s sharp, because he’s chiseled it down and painted it himself, in colors, and lines, and things that help him understand. It’s clear and it’s sharp, because it never really happened. But he’s shaped it to his liking – that dull mass of memories – night, after night, after night. He makes up stories about Rick and about Alex, and about Jem, and his parents, and himself. And, after a while, he thinks that maybe these are what’s really weighing his head down. Thinks maybe these stories are heavier than just forgetting everything. Maybe he should just forget. That might fix his neck.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a bit strange. Apologies for that, but thanks for reading! x


End file.
